He won an Oscar for playing the unnerving serial killer Hannibal Lecter in The Silence of the Lambs. He picked up another Academy Award nod for his Nixon in the biopic, not to mention nominations for roles in The Remains of the Day and Amistad.

By all accounts, he’s likely to add his Hitchcock portrayal to his Oscar honours list. In Hitchcock, which opens in Toronto Nov. 23 and other selected U. S. cities, the director is profiled during the making of Psycho in 1959.

Hopkins immerses himself in the part and goes beyond the “Good evening” persona that North American audiences might remember from Hitchcock’s hosting of his TV series, Alfred Hitchcock Presents.

“He’s an immense figure, physically and in stature, and his reputation was probably one of the greatest filmmakers of the century,” said Hopkins by Skype from London, taking a break from filming the Bruce Willis sequel to Red.

Certainly, the Welsh-born actor was also a member of the Alfred Hitchcock fan club.

“I’ve been a fan ever since I was a young boy,” he admitted. “At 16 years of age, I saw Rear Window, and then later the other ones; North by Northwest, and Vertigo is one of my favourites, and then Psycho in 1960.”

Psycho, especially, stayed with him long afterward. “I was one of the early viewers. It had just been released a week in September, 1960, and I was in Manchester, and I was knocked out by the power of the film, the terrifying aspect of the film.”

His familiarity with his subject didn’t make the task at hand any easier. While filming the biopic, the acclaimed performer continued to doubt that he was capturing the true essence of the complex man.

“He was a Cockney,” said Hopkins of Hitchcock’s formative years growing up in working class East London.

“The accent he put on for his shows, when he became known as the great Alfred Hitchcock, was for the benefit of American audiences. So they must have thought of him as this high-born aristocrat, which he wasn’t.”

The actor playing Hitchcock understood his vulnerability for different reasons.

“My insecurities started after I caught a sight of myself (as Hitchcock) on those preview playbacks, where the director can watch the screen,” recalled Hopkins. “I couldn’t see them anymore, because I wasn’t sure that I’d got it right.”

After catching a preview of the finished movie recently, he said he feels much better about his performance and the movie.

“I saw the film about four weeks ago,” said Hopkins. “I think (writer-director) Sacha Gervasi has done a remarkable piece of work, and I was very pleased with what I saw.”

bthompson@postmedia.com
blog: Canada.com/sceneandheard

]]>http://o.canada.com/entertainment/scene-and-heard-anthony-hopkins-psyched-about-his-hitchcock/feed0hopkinsbbt1Hitchcock’s Jessica Biel talks about fame after marrying Justin Timberlake (Scene and Heard)http://o.canada.com/entertainment/movies/hitchcocks-jessica-biel-talks-about-fame-after-marrying-justin-timberlake-scene-and-heard
http://o.canada.com/entertainment/movies/hitchcocks-jessica-biel-talks-about-fame-after-marrying-justin-timberlake-scene-and-heard#commentsTue, 20 Nov 2012 20:50:41 +0000http://o.canada.com/?p=153843]]>After their recent high-profile nuptials, Jessica Biel and Justin Timberlake went from putting up with the spotlight to barely coping with the media microscope.

So it’s ironic that Biel plays publicity-shy actress Vera Miles in the biopic Hitchcock, which opens Nov. 23 in Toronto and selected U. S. cities.

In the film focusing on the making of Psycho, Anthony Hopkins plays the London-born film director while Helen Mirren is his wife, Alma. Scarlett Johansson is Psycho lead Janet Leigh. James D’Arcy portrays Anthony Perkins as the anxious killer Norman Bates.

It is Biel as Miles who becomes the object of Hitchcock’s hate after she has to drop out of his Vertigo production because of her pregnancy. It’s a revealing sidebar which underscores both of their personalities.

During a recent New York interview, Biel agreed. She said she thought Miles cared more about her craft than becoming famous, and was a family-first woman.

“I don’t think that she looked at her career as being a failure of some kind, or something that she wasn’t proud of,” noted 30-year-old Biel. “She just wasn’t interested in being a star.”

The actress did the usual research for her portrayal, and even approached Miles for a meet-and-greet. ‘Vera is alive but doesn’t have a public life and was not interested in speaking with me at all.”

She did have more luck with her Miles’ grandson. “He’s highly protective of his grandmother,” Biel said. “But I think he’s the best historian of who she is and who she was at the time.”

Biel’s verdict: “She had a private life and her life is exactly what she wanted.”

As it is, the former teen star of the family series 7th Heaven has resigned herself to a life less ordinary and all the paparazzi chases that go with living famously by Timberlake’s side.

“I feel that it’s very challenging to have a private life,” she said. “That’s just my opinion. It’s been very hard for me to have any sort of privacy.

“I get it,” she added. “It’s a balance you have to try to create, but it’s very hard. I really would love the days when there was no TMZ, and there was no Internet.”

]]>http://o.canada.com/entertainment/movies/hitchcocks-jessica-biel-talks-about-fame-after-marrying-justin-timberlake-scene-and-heard/feed0Jessica Bielbbt1Scene and Heard: Twilight’s Robert Pattinson dislikes being a franchise playerhttp://o.canada.com/entertainment/movies/scene-and-heard-twilights-robert-pattinson-dislikes-being-a-franchise-player
http://o.canada.com/entertainment/movies/scene-and-heard-twilights-robert-pattinson-dislikes-being-a-franchise-player#commentsFri, 16 Nov 2012 19:29:15 +0000http://o.canada.com/?p=151759]]>The Twilight Saga: Breaking Dawn – Part 2 is on track to break the franchise’s opening weekend box office record set by Part 1 which pulled in $142.8 million US.

Part 2, Twilight‘s last gleaming chapter (for now), is on track to rake in more than $160 million during its first three days in theatres.

You might think that would make Robert Pattinson happy, but he’s not necessarily. Apparently it’s lonely at the top of the box-office charts.

“After the first Twilight, people started referring to it as a franchise, but a franchise is a Burger King or a Subway,” said the Twilight star promoting Part 2 in L. A. recently.

“It’s not a movie. The people who start to say (franchise) are generally the people who are making money off of it.”

One of those money-maker types just happens to be Pattinson, who along with Kristen Stewart and Taylor Lautner, have earned millions from the series winding up with the release of Part 2, receiving some of the best reviews of the Twilight flicks.

Still, the English actor was considering his post-Twilight phase, even as he thought about his next move.

“They love it when something becomes a franchise,” he said. “But, as an actor, I think it’s scary.”

How so?

“You really feel like you have no control,” Pattinson said. “It’s a huge juggernaut, especially when something becomes part of the cultural landscape, as well.

“So it’s really scary because you get trapped and you get scared of changing, which is the worst thing that can happen, if you want to be any kind of artist.”

In the meantime, Pattinson can relax a bit between paydays as he considers his non-franchise future.